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Title: Teen SCIENCE!Emitter: NoneCharacters: Synapse, CordeliaNPCs: None (Does the food-blob count?)Place: CampusTime: June 28th, 2010Summary: Cordelia approaches Synapse about a Project for SCIENCE! This will end all too well for the scientists. Their peers, however, should probably beware.

After a reprimand for building a trebuchet on the quad, Synapse has kept himself to lower key projects while waiting for school to start again. He's got a sample of one of the lunch blobs and has been training it to follow him around. And play fetch. The downside of course is that the blob usually has dissolved the stick in its bodily acids before it ges back, but hey, at least it's scouring the floor clean. That's something, right?

Flipping a doggie treat — why does she have doggie treats? Not something you want to ask — to the blob as it sweeps by her feet with the slowly-dissolving stick, Cordelia follows the critter back to its trainer. "Hi. We need to work on something to de-hormone the school, because this is getting absolutely ridiculous now." No preamble, no waiting, and direct, that's her.

Patting the blob (with a chainmail glove to avoid it being dissolved) Synapse coaxes it back into its jar with a piece of lettuce and seals it up again. The jar…burbles. Freaky. "De-hormone? I'm afraid I haven't really been paying attention to that sort of thing, what's going on?"

"Everyone keeps on going insane about the opposite sex, and it's distracting from actual projects and work. So, I propose an experiment wherein we create a treatment to reduce the effect of teenage hormones upon the daily lives of our peers. Sound good?" Cordelia eyes the jar with some interest. "If it splits, can I have one of its clones?"

"…Huh. It'd be an interesting challenge. We'd have to suppress the…emotional effects of the hormones -without- blocking their effect on growth and development or they might be stuck that way. But simple solutions like saltpeter in the food won't do." Synapse starts pacing, pausing to note, "Oh, sure. He probably should have split already, but I'm trying to keep his diet down so we don't get a repeat of the kitchen incident."

"I think it could be done if we created a reuptake inhibitor specific to the emotional spectrum; delivery might be a difficult thing, but I'm pretty sure we could do it. And I have the /perfect/ initial subject for it." Cordelia's smile is a little bit maniacal, really. She leans against the wall, folding her arms over her bustiere. "Thanks. It'll be useful for getting rid of some of the odd byproducts of my work, and company as well."

"Shall we retire to your lab, then? Unfortunately I still don't have a proper setup here; some business about how I'm not officially attending classes yet." Synapse rolls his eyes at this. "Delivery system? Simple enough; a normal spray bottle should disperse enough of the resulting chemical to be efficacious, and really, it seems poetic. Like spraying a cat with water for acting up." Synapse zips away to put the jar back in his room, then returns. "So how far along are you on development?"

Cordelia rolls her eyes. "Getting ahold of all the materials for a proper lab can be difficult when you haven't the resources to draw from in class," she agrees, gesturing towards the doors. "I've isolated the hormonal compounds that we must neutralize or reduce, and have samples to test upon as well as some control samples." She holds a hand out. "Let's go. Second door on the right in Taylor."

Cordelia's Room - Taylor Hall - Steranko Institute

What was once an actual dorm room has been turned into a laboratory, with the bed having been moved out and replaced by a fold-up travel cot for additional space. One entire wall is taken up by a Babbage Engine that seems, rather than calculating, to churn out /things/. In one corner is a medical bed with various sharp and disturbing-looking implements dangling over it, with 'AUTOMATIC SAWBONES' painted in red on the main manipulating arm. The closet is taken up by seaman's chests full of various types of clothing. There are beakers of unidentified objects and fluids scattered here and there, and overall it looks like organized chaos.

Taking her hand, the campus blurs, and suddenly they're at her room. "Wow, this -is- a nice setup. I'm a little envious." Synapse is careful not to poke at anything, but strips off his blob-handling gloves and tucks them into his belt. "Right then. So where are the main culprits?"

There's a clear(ish) space on the main workbench, petri dishes set in rows in front of coils and vials and bubbling beakers of miscellaneous fluids. "There," Cordelia says, pointing. "They should be labelled properly already, and there're some preliminary delivery systems there" She points at some half-finished chrome, glass and bronze gun-like things. "and my observations are on the clipboard there." She jerks her chin towards neatly-written (albeit in old-fashioned shorthand) paper notes.

Synapse starts with the notes first. "An exothermic reaction? They -exploded-? Huh." He eyes the delivery systems. "We'll want something that will be stable in a DMSO solution; that way it can be delivered into the system through the skin and take effect very quickly. So what's your curren thought on how to suppress it?"

"It took forever to get the glass shards out of the wall," Cordelia confirms with a sigh. "You're probably better with biologicals than I am; I was thinking of inhibiting the compounds' reuptake in the presynaptic cell, since that shouldn't inhibit growth or bodily function beyond the whole behavioural issues, but suffice it to say it resulted in that." She points at the charred point on the wall, surrounded by little holes in the drywall. "We might also have to temporarily reduce the number of neural connections within the brain to encourage the behaviour."

"That could be dangerous; that portion of the brain is very closely tied up with regulating autonomic functions; if we're not careful it could actually work in retrograde and revert to primitive behavior." Synapse frowns thoughtfully, as he eyes the damaged wall. "But still, I think you're on the right track with an inhibitor…wait. I think I've a notion. Blind spots!"

Cordelia's eyes light up. "Just a moment," she says, turning to rummage through her closet. Corsets, makeup and perfume bottles go flying as she digs for some old notes. "Ha-HA!" She hands him a notebook containing all her notes on her devolution ray. "I know I charted the brain in this when I created the Devolution Ray, and there was a section on the hormonal effects upon neural networks…"

"Oh, excellent." Synapse flips through the notes at, well, Synapse- speed, then starts reading them again. "You see, what I was thinking was that what we need to do isn't stop the effects of the hormone; we let it work, but introduce a carrier chemical that stops them from recognizing the signals for the hormone to -trigger-. So they won't act like a moron around a member of the opposite sex because they just don't recognize them as…opposite, you see."

"Hmm. That's sort of what I was trying to do here," Cordelia notes, flipping through the de-hormonizer notes and pointing at a few. "I was basing it off of the SSRI stuff currently in use as depression treatment, except /far/ more effective without a build-up time. I think I have the perfect way to do that, too…"

Synapse nods at the notes. "So I see. Slightly different approach, but this could work in conjunction wit the blind spots…oh? What do you have?"

"A combination of the biological and psychological; a temporary aversion to certainlines of thought until the … therapeutic drug works its way into place. It could be done pretty easily if you adjusted the harmonics described here-" She points at a particular portion of the Devolution Ray notes, beaming. "-which I can /definitely/ do."

Synapse grins back at her, just as though they -weren't- planning to do horrible things to the minds of their classmates. "Let's get to work, then, shall we? I think we have our solution!"